When distance dissolves

When I was starting out as a young journalist in the mid-1990s, a quiet anxiety rippled through the newsroom of the Korean-language economic daily where I worked. The government had expanded the Gwacheon Government Complex, and senior reporters routinely complained about having to travel "all the way" to a city nestled just south of Seoul. To them, Gwacheon felt like a daunting far frontier. Some openly pondered whether they would eventually be forced to pack up their lives and move there just…